"THE HOUR COMETH"

“THE HOUR COMETH”

            In the longest continuous conversation that he has with anyone in the Bible, Jesus engages a Samaritan woman on matters of faith and gender and justice in the fourth chapter of John.  In that chapter, he indicates to the “other,” to the alien one, that the time is coming when God will be revealed as the God of many different kinds of people.  The unnamed (what else is new?) woman gives Jesus as good as she gets, but in the end, she is impressed by him and goes to tell all her neighbors, thereby becoming the first evangelist in John’s gospel.

            In August, 1974, Caroline and  were traveling in west Tennessee and Arkansas, meeting family and friends after our marriage in May, 1974 (Caroline did not want to be a June bride, so we got married during the middle of my final exams. 

We went to McKenzie, Tennessee where her grandmother Sophie lived.  Sophie was in her early 90’s, but she hosted an early afternoon tea for all her friends to come and meet Caroline’s new husband.  As I recall, it was a lot of older women, coming to see Caroline all grown-up and married.  We had a good visit, but at about 4 PM, Sophie made an announcement – she really appreciated all the friends coming over, but now the party was ending because she was going to turn on the TV to watch the Watergate proceedings.  She invited all guests to stay and watch, but she wanted it made clear that our energy would be focused on Watergate, not on the party.   It would only be a few days until Richard Nixon would resign as President.  The hour had come.

            Though I think that the outcome will be different, it feels as if the hour cometh now in the impeachment inquiry hearings on the presidency of Donald Trump.  If the Democratic House votes to impeach Trump, it will be the first time that the Democrats have ever impeached a president.  The other two impeachments of Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton came at the hands of the Republicans.  The Democratic House had not voted on articles of impeachment when Nixon resigned, although they surely would have.  I do believe that the House will vote to impeach Donald Trump, and I do believe that they should.   At this point, it does not look like the Senate will convict him, but the House must go through this process.  It may be a bad political move for the Democrats (I do not think that it will be, however), but Trump’s presidency has been so full of deceit, contempt and egregious lawbreaking, that impeachment must take place to seek to save a shred of decency for the country and our democratic republic. 

            Trump seems to have such contempt for our democratic institutions that the shorter his term as president, the better.  I do not believe that the impeachment will be validated in the Senate, so registration and turnout for the 2020 election will be key.  Let us all commit ourselves to register at least 10 people to vote who are not currently registered.  The Trumpsters seem unlikely to change, so it will be a question of turning people out to the polls, if we are to defeat his desire for a second term as president.  I don’t want to be apocalyptic, but a Trump re-election may mean the end of the USA as we know it.  I don’t know if this election is more similar to 1860 (when Lincoln was elected), to 1876 (when Hayes was elected by a compromise to pull the federal troops out of the South), or to 1932 (when Franklin Roosevelt was elected to the first of his four terms).  I do know that it is an essential part of 2020 to make Donald Trump a one-term president.  And if he is defeated, the next question is whether he will step down or claim that the election was stolen from him.  In the end, the U.S. military may be the deciding factor – let’s hope that I am just paranoid about this, but nothing in Trump’s background or performance makes me think that he will accept losing the 2020 election.  The hour may indeed be coming.